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#Post#: 34954--------------------------------------------------
Re: The fearless evangelist
By: patrick jane Date: September 15, 2021, 11:56 pm
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HTML https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2021/september/religious-exemption-covid-vaccine-employer-mandate-biden.html
Religious Exemption Requests Spike as Employers Mandate Vaccine
Some white evangelicals, the faith group most likely to refuse
to get the shot, join thousands in citing “sincerely held”
religious beliefs.
About 3,000 Los Angeles Police Department employees are citing
religious objections to try to get out of the required COVID-19
vaccination. In Washington state, hundreds of state workers are
seeking similar exemptions. And an Arkansas hospital has been
swamped with so many such requests from employees that it is
apparently calling their bluff.
Religious objections, once used sparingly around the country to
get exempted from various required vaccines, are becoming a much
more widely used loophole against the COVID-19 shot.
And it is only likely to grow following President Joe Biden’s
sweeping new vaccine mandates covering more than 100 million
Americans, including executive branch employees and workers at
businesses with more than 100 people on the payroll.
The administration acknowledges that some small minority of
Americans will use—and some may seek to exploit—religious
exemptions. But it said it believes even marginal improvements
in vaccination levels will save lives.
It’s not clear yet how many federal employees have requested a
religious exemption. The Labor Department has said an
accommodation can be denied if it causes an undue burden.
In the states, mask and vaccine requirements vary, but most
offer exemptions for certain medical conditions or religious or
philosophical objections. The use of such exemptions,
particularly by parents on behalf of their schoolchildren, has
been growing over the past decade.
The allowance was enshrined in the federal Civil Rights Act of
1964, which says employers must make reasonable accommodations
for employees who object to work requirements because of
“sincerely held” religious beliefs.
A religious belief does not have be recognized by an organized
religion, and it can be new, unusual or “seem illogical or
unreasonable to others,” according to rules laid out by the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. But it can’t be founded
solely on political or social ideas.
That puts employers in the position of determining what is a
legitimate religious belief and what is a dodge.
Many major religious denominations have no objections to the
COVID-19 vaccines. But the rollout has prompted heated debates
because of the longtime role that cell lines derived from fetal
tissue have played, directly or indirectly, in the research and
development of various vaccines and medicines.
Roman Catholic leaders in New Orleans and St. Louis went so far
to call Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 shot “morally compromised.”
J&J has stressed that there is no fetal tissue in its vaccine.
Moreover, the Vatican’s doctrine office has said it is “morally
acceptable” for Catholics to receive COVID-19 vaccines that are
based on research that used cells derived from aborted fetuses.
Pope Francis himself has said it would be “suicide” not to get
the shot.
In New York, state lawmakers attempted to make the vaccine
mandatory for medical workers, with no religious exemptions. On
Tuesday, a federal judge blocked the rule because it lacked the
opt-out.
An August AP-NORC poll found that 58 percent of white
evangelical Protestants, 72 percent of white mainline
Protestants, 80 percent of Catholics and 73 percent of Americans
who are religiously unaffiliated say they have been vaccinated.
Seventy percent of nonwhite Protestants say they have been,
including 70 percent of Black Protestants.
Among white evangelical Protestants, the religious group least
likely to have been vaccinated, 33 percent say they will not get
the shot.
Across the US, public officials, doctors, and community leaders
have been trying to help people circumvent COVID-19 mask and
vaccine requirements.
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, pastor Jackson Lahmeyer is offering a
“religious exemption” form on his church’s website for download,
along with links for suggested donations to the church. The
29-year-old is running for the US Senate.
Anyone interested can get the form signed by a religious leader.
He said on Twitter that more than 14,000 people have downloaded
it. He wrote that what was amazing was “how many pastors refuse
to sign the form for members in their church.” He said he can
sign if someone joins the church and donates.
But obtaining a religious exemption is not as simple as
producing a signed form from a religious leader. Measles
outbreaks in schools over the past decade prompted some states
to change their policies. Some now require an actual signed
affidavit from a religious leader, instead of an online form.
California got rid of nonmedical exemptions in 2015.
Erika Cole, a Maryland-based attorney who serves as a senior
editorial advisor with ChurchLawAndTax.com, a CT sister site,
previously told CT employers shouldn’t require church leaders to
verify religious exemptions.
“Currently, there are two legally recognized exemptions from a
mandatory vaccination: medical reasons and sincerely held
religious beliefs. When presented with notice of a religious
exemption, some employers have requested the employee provide
support from the church he/she attends. This, of course, is
troublesome for a number of reasons,” Cole said. “…according to
the EEOC, the individual, not the church he or she attends,
holds the ‘sincerely held religious belief’ that may be the
basis for refusing vaccination. As such, it is the individual’s
right to advise his/her employer of that belief, and not a
requirement of the church he/she may attend.”
Some private employers are taking a hard line. United Airlines
told employees last week that those who obtain religious
exemptions will be put on unpaid leave until new coronavirus
testing procedures are in place.
In Los Angeles, Police Chief Michel Moore said he is waiting for
guidance from the city’s personnel department regarding the
exemptions. The city has mandated that municipal employees get
vaccinated by Oct. 5 unless they are granted a medical or
religious exemption. A group of LAPD employees is suing over the
policy.
“I can’t and won’t comment on the sincerity level” of people
claiming a religious exemption, the police chief said. “I don’t
want to speculate. Religion in America has many different
definitions.”
Ten LAPD employees have died of COVID-19, and thousands in the
department have been infected.
In Washington state, approximately 60,000 state employees are
subject to a mandate issued by Gov. Jay Inslee that they be
fully vaccinated by Oct. 18 or lose their job, unless they
obtain a medical or religious exemption and receive an
accommodation that allows them to remain employees.
As of Tuesday, more than 3,800 workers had requested religious
exemptions. So far, 737 have been approved, but officials
stressed that an exemption does not guarantee continued
employment.
Once the exemption is approved, each agency has to evaluate the
employee’s position and whether the person can still do the job
with an accommodation while ensuring a safe workplace. Seven
accommodations so far have been granted.
Inslee spokeswoman Tara Lee said that the process “may help
distinguish between a sincerely held personal belief and a
sincerely held religious belief.”
In Arkansas, about 5 percent of the staff at the privately run
Conway Regional Health System has requested religious or medical
exemptions.
The hospital responded by sending employees a form that lists a
multitude of common medicines—including Tylenol, Pepto-Bismol,
Preparation H, and Sudafed—that it said were developed through
the use of fetal cell lines.
The form asks people to sign it and attest that “my sincerely
held religious belief is consistent and true and I do not use or
will not use” any of the listed medications.
In a statement, Conway Regional Health President and CEO Matt
Troup said: “Staff who are sincere … should have no hesitancy
with agreeing to the list of medicines listed.”
#Post#: 34957--------------------------------------------------
Re: The fearless evangelist
By: patrick jane Date: September 15, 2021, 11:57 pm
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[img]
HTML https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/125549.jpg?w=700[/img]
HTML https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2021/september/christian-college-cccu-faith-covid-vaccine-ifyc.html
Evangelical Colleges Join Effort to Promote Faith in the Vaccine
A campaign to educate campuses about COVID-19 vaccination shifts
from persuading the hesitant to making it easier for the
willing.
Last week, as President Joe Biden was announcing a new vaccine
mandate for large workplaces, students at more than 100
Christian colleges were trying to persuade their communities to
get the shot voluntarily.
Since those between the ages of 18 and 29 are among the least
likely to be hospitalized or to suffer serious illness or death
due to COVID-19, swaths of young people didn’t get the shot as
soon as it became available earlier in the year.
Dozens of evangelical schools belonging to the Council for
Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) have joined an
interfaith effort called Faith in the Vaccine, designed to
recruit students and faculty to help inform their communities
about vaccination and recognize the role religious identity
might play in people’s hesitation.
“This was not about hounding people into getting the vaccine or
shaming them if they were hesitant,” said Eboo Patel, founder of
Interfaith Youth Corps (IFYC), which launched the effort last
spring and has disbursed $4 million to fund the campaign so far.
“It was very much about engaging with great respect and
sensitivity … and helping them kind of talk their own way into
vaccination.”
Nearly 50 CCCU member schools signed up for the program. IFYC,
along with medical professionals from the Rush University
Medical School, trained campus ambassadors in conversational
tactics and medical information about the vaccines.
But what started out as a campaign to promote education around
vaccination within these faith communities has shifted to
efforts to actually get shots in arms. The Faith in the Vaccine
ambassadors, according to IFYC, have helped promote or host
hundreds of clinics and events across the country, accounting
for an estimated 10,000 or more vaccinations.
Persuasion, not Pressure
Organizers saw the campaign as a way to make sure people had the
information they needed around vaccination. Aaron Hinojosa, a
faculty ambassador for the program at Azusa Pacific University,
said participants aren’t using religion to pressure or shame
people.
“It’s not to the point where it’s like, ‘You have to do it,’”
Hinojosa said, “But, ‘Here’s what we know, here’s what it is,
and you have to make a good, informed decision.’”
Some found the conversational approach was a little too hazy to
be motivating.
“A lot of the goal, it seemed at beginning, was trying to have
these conversations with people that are vaccine hesitant or
vaccine rejectors, and almost change their minds,” said Joel
Frees, faculty ambassador at Southern Nazarene University in
Oklahoma.
He said it was difficult to find ways to encourage college
students who saw that their age put them at a very low risk for
severe illness. Frees said he struggled to energize his team of
ambassadors over the summer, when outbreaks fell.
Hinojosa’s team at Azusa Pacific hadn’t reported much activity
last spring, either, other than a series of Instagram Live
videos about why they chose to get vaccinated and personal
conversations between ambassadors and their loved ones.
Surveys conducted by IFYC along with the Public Religion
Research Institute (PRRI) tracked attitudes toward the vaccine.
Between March and June, “vaccine refusal” held steady at around
14 percent, while vaccine hesitancy diminished from 28 percent
of respondents to just 15 percent. So IFYC announced in July
that instead of focusing on persuading the former, they’d work
to help the latter.
The change in approach came just as the delta variant was
emerging as the most active strain in the US. With delta, young
people have suffered more than earlier in the pandemic;
Americans under age 50 now account for roughly a third of
COVID-19-positive patients in hospitals.
Campuses have seen delta’s impact in contrast to the earlier
months of the pandemic. Several Christian colleges, including
Liberty University and Cedarville University, had the first few
weeks of the school year disrupted by outbreaks among the
student body.
Few CCCU schools—including Seattle Pacific University and
Pepperdine University—required vaccination for this school year,
allowing for exemptions due to medical, religious, or
philosophical reasons.
From Conversations to Clinics
According to PRRI’s survey, the three most-cited reasons among
all Americans for not yet getting vaccinated were the inability
to get time off of work, trouble finding childcare, and
transportation issues.
After those survey results were in, Faith in the Vaccine
ambassadors began working with local health departments and
other institutions to host, organize, and publicize vaccine
clinics.
Frees said Southern Nazarene’s ambassadors have worked with the
Oklahoma City Health Department to host two vaccine clinics on
campus, administering a total of 74 shots to mostly students.
They’ve also hosted educational seminars for students about the
vaccine and how it was developed.
Hinojosa at Azusa Pacific said ambassadors helped the
university’s inconveniently located health department set up a
temporary vaccine station in the middle of campus one day.
Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, organized a mobile
vaccine clinic for local migrant workers who may not have been
able to access the vaccine otherwise, Patel said.
PRRI found in March that Hispanic Protestants were the most
hesitant to get vaccinated, followed by white evangelicals. Some
ambassadors reported the hesitation about getting the vaccine
among the Latino community stems from fear that if they show up
at a clinic, their immigration status may be exposed.
At an online rally this week, IFYC shared several video
testimonies from other Faith in the Vaccine student ambassadors
about their successes.
In one video, Tori Wootan from University of the Incarnate Word
in San Antonio said they’d hosted a clinic in the tiny nearby
town of Natalia—population 1,200—where 56 people were
vaccinated.
Irene Kuriakose from Queens University in Charlotte, North
Carolina, said her group encouraged community members to get
vaccinated by giving away grocery gift cards and raffle tickets
for a $500 prize. Others set up information tables with swag
outside popular campus events, like move-in week or athletic
competitions.
“You’d be surprised how many people are interested in scheduling
or reporting their vaccines if you provide them a super cool
bucket hat,” said Anu Agbi, student ambassador at Baylor
University.
At Emory University in Atlanta, Rachel Lewis said a homeless man
had been hanging around multiple vaccine clinics, where
ambassadors were also handing out hygiene items and toiletries.
At the fourth clinic, he finally agreed to get the vaccine.
“We’ve been able to provide a lot of vaccines to a lot of
people, and our community members now trust us,” Lewis said.
Patel said sharing these stories at their rally this week was a
way to motivate Faith in the Vaccine teams across the country to
continue their “fall push.” It’s up to IFYC donors now, he said,
to continue funding the program into the winter and spring.
#Post#: 35258--------------------------------------------------
Re: The fearless evangelist
By: patrick jane Date: October 8, 2021, 7:11 am
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HTML https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2021/october/hillsong-church-brian-houston-frank-abuse-coverup-court.html
Hillsong Founder to Plead Not Guilty to Abuse Coverup
Brian Houston will go to court in Sydney over alleged child
abuse by his late father.
Hillsong Church founder Brian Houston will plead not guilty to
illegally concealing alleged child abuse by his father, his
lawyer told a court on Tuesday.
Houston did not appear at Sydney’s Downing Center Local Court
when his charge was mentioned before a registrar for the first
time. His lawyer told the court Houston would be pleading not
guilty to the charge of concealing a serious indictable offense
of another person, his late preacher father Frank Houston.
The case will next be before the court on November 23.
Police will allege that Frank Houston indecently assaulted a
young male in 1970.
Court documents allege that Brian Houston believed his father
had committed the crime. Police will allege that the younger
Houston failed to disclose information to police that could help
secure the prosecution of his father.
Since being charged, Houston has stepped down from the board of
Hillsong, the church he founded with wife Bobbie in Sydney in
1983. Now a global empire, the church says 150,000 people in 30
countries attend its services and 50 million people sing its
songs each week.
Houston, 64, was in the United States in August when detectives
served his Sydney lawyers with a notice for him to appear in
court.
He said in a statement at the time he welcomed the “opportunity
to set the record straight.”
Houston returned to Sydney last month and was released from 14
days’ hotel quarantine last week.
An Australian government inquiry into institutional responses to
allegations of child sex abuse found in 2015 that Houston did
not tell police that his father was a child sex abuser.
The inquiry found that Houston became aware of allegations
against his father in 1999 and allowed him to retire quietly
rather report him to police. His father confessed to the abuse
before he died in 2004 at age 82.
Hillsong Church has said repeatedly that it has not been
involved in this matter, as Frank Houston never worked for the
church, and has defended Brian Houston’s response.
“Upon being told of his father’s actions, Brian Houston
confronted his father, reported the matter to the National
Executive Assemblies of God in Australia, relayed the matter to
the governing board of Sydney Christian Life Centre, and
subsequently made a public announcement to the church. Brian
sought to honor the victim’s multiple requests not to inform the
police,” the church said in a statement in July.
“As a recent development, charges have officially been filed
against Brian Houston,” the church said at the time. “We are
disappointed that Pastor Brian has been charged, and ask that he
be afforded the presumption of innocence and due process as is
his right. He has advised us that he will defend this and looks
forward to clearing his name.”
Hillsong, known for chart-topping worship music and megachurches
across the globe, became its own denomination in 2018. Last
year, Brian Houston announced an investigation of its New York
City campus, where pastor Carl Lentz had stepped down over
infidelity.
#Post#: 35315--------------------------------------------------
Re: The fearless evangelist
By: patrick jane Date: October 13, 2021, 9:49 am
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[img]
HTML https://www-images.christianitytoday.com/images/125869.png?w=700[/img]
HTML https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2021/october/canada-evangelism-church-study.html
Evangelism Not a Priority in Canadian Churches
Even during crisis of COVID-19, few are finding ways to share
their faith, study finds.
If Canadians have been longing for meaning in their lives during
the COVID-19 pandemic, it is unlikely that anyone has told them
about Jesus.
According to a recent survey conducted by Alpha Canada and the
Flourishing Congregations Institute, 65 percent of church
leaders say that evangelism hasn’t been a priority for their
congregations over the last several years. Fifty-five percent
say their congregations do not equip Christians to share their
faith.
Shaila Visser, national director of Alpha Canada, said she was
somewhat surprised by the numbers because she sees so many
opportunities for Christians to share their faith. The pandemic,
in particular, has caused people to ask significant questions
about the meaning and purpose of their lives.
“The opportunity before the church in Canada is to meet them and
their questions with the person of Jesus,” she said, “to show
them that Jesus is very good.”
The survey asked Canadian leaders across Christian
denominations, “As you think about your local
congregation/parish over the last several years, to what extent
would you say your congregation/parish has given priority (or
not) to evangelism?”
More than 2,700 church leaders responded between May and July
2021.
About 20 percent said evangelism was a moderate concern. Only 9
percent said it was a high priority for members of their
congregation to share their faith.
Respondents included a few leaders from the mainline United
Church of Canada and just over 20 percent from the Roman
Catholic Church. The majority, though, came from evangelical
traditions, including leaders from Baptist churches, Pentecostal
churches, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the Evangelical
Free Church, the Church of the Nazarene, the Foursquare Church,
and the Salvation Army. The tendency not to emphasize evangelism
appears to be widespread.
Steven Jones, president of the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist
Churches in Canada, said he was “deeply concerned” by the
numbers. He notes they reflect the continued decline of
evangelical Christianity in Canada.
Historically, about 10 percent of Canadians have considered
themselves evangelical. Today, according to the Evangelical
Fellowship of Canada’s quadrennial census, only 6 percent of
Canadians are evangelical. These are the lowest numbers on
record.
Christianity has increasingly been viewed in a negative light in
secular Canadian culture, particularly in the wake of sexual
abuse scandals and light being shed on the role churches played
for decades in residential schools for Indigenous people in
Canada. Dozens of churches were spray-painted, vandalized, and
burned following the discovery of mass graves at several
residential schools this summer.
That negative view was clearly seen in the responses to the
Alpha survey. The number one challenge to evangelism, leaders
said, was “perceived antagonism toward Christian values and the
Christian church.”
According to David Koop, pastor of Coastal Church, a large urban
congregation in Vancouver, British Columbia, a lot of younger
Christians have accepted the secular Canadian criticisms of the
faith.
“The next generation has a really different narrative that
they’re listening to,” he said.
Because secular society views church as a problem, he said, many
Christians seem to shy away from sharing their faith. At the
very least, they’re more averse to traditional methods of
evangelism. For much of the 20th century, evangelism meant
passing out tracts or knocking on people’s doors. Today, Koop
said, there’s more emphasis on relationships and showing people
how you live out your faith.
When the survey participants were asked to list the three most
common methods of evangelism encouraged among their
congregation/parish, the most common answer was “showing one’s
faith through their actions.”
In some ways, Koop thinks that’s a positive shift.
“I think the most effective way is still just to do what Jesus
said in Luke 10,” Koop said. “Go to people’s homes. Get to know
them. Live in a community relationship. Pray for them.”
He’s found the pandemic has created roadblocks in that effort
with many churches looking inward rather than focusing on
evangelism.
“There’s a weariness,” he said. “There’s a sense I need to keep
my own fences mended and stay strong.”
Jeff Eastwood, who lives and pastors a church on the opposite
end of the country in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, sees
the same thing. Broad cultural changes have made it more
difficult to speak about faith when antireligious rhetoric
abounds.
“When the majority—or it seems like the majority—are giving
assent to this ideology, it becomes more difficult for
Christians to speak into that, especially in a nuanced way,”
said Eastwood, who pastors Grace Baptist Church.
Eastwood encourages Christians to do what Jesus did, though, and
connect with people where they are, engaging them and speaking
to their specific situations.
“The best evangelism comes out of relationships,” he said.
The survey was done during widespread lockdowns in Canada
because of the pandemic. Christian leaders say they’re not clear
what effect COVID-19 has had on evangelism.
It may have exacerbated the problem and made evangelism harder.
Outreach became more difficult, with gatherings prohibited and
many people limiting contact to a small “bubble” of people.
Eastwood’s church, for example, had to cancel its Vacation Bible
Study.
Plus, church leaders who were already working as hard as they
could were overwhelmed trying to adapt to changing conditions.
It became easier for churches to focus on themselves and not the
broader community.
“COVID has given a great excuse to be very selfish," said Vijay
Krishnan, who pastors The Well, a church in the suburbs of
Toronto.
Krishnan believes that this tendency is something that believers
have struggled with since the New Testament period. The early
church was content to stay in Jerusalem rather than carry out
the Great Commission. It took persecution, he said, to scatter
them to the ends of the world as Jesus had commanded.
At the same time, Krishnan said, the pandemic has created
opportunities for people to be more open about their struggles.
Most people have been impacted in some way by the pandemic, and
that shared cultural experience can open doors to talk about
more personal matters.
When people share their struggles, he doesn’t just tell them
he’ll pray for them but prays for them at the moment.
“It’s like you’re inviting them to a spiritual encounter with a
God you know,” Krishnan said.
Visser has also had opportunities to pray with people because of
COVID-19.
“What it provides is an encounter between two people with God in
the middle, regardless of what they believe,” she said.
The best way to share your faith is to listen to people, she
said, and then “run toward their pain and meet them in the
messiness of their lives or in the beauty of their lives.”
In a time when many are suffering from loneliness, providing
opportunities for human interaction can be a powerful form of
evangelism.
“The world is longing for in-person connection around meaningful
conversations, and inviting them into spaces where they can have
that connection and encounter God is increasingly important,”
Visser said. “It’s more important than it was before the
pandemic.”
In a pandemic, though, that may mean going online. Visser ran an
Alpha program on Zoom for friends spread across Canada. She said
she probably wouldn’t have done that before COVID-19.
“We have never met in person as a group, and we have formed some
of the deepest, most wonderful supportive community
opportunities you could even imagine,” she said. “All on Zoom.”
Jones said a lot of evangelical churches are embracing online
opportunities and looking for opportunities they wouldn’t have
before.
“I think all our churches need to be live streaming because we
are reaching people who would never go through the door of a
church or facility, but they will go to your website,” he said.
“It’s a good first place.”
And the need is urgent. Canadians are looking for meaning and
purpose, struggling with loneliness, and dealing with the
tragedies brought by COVID-19.
“People are hurting, and they’re confused,” Eastwood said. “We
have an opportunity to speak into that in a real way.”
#Post#: 35322--------------------------------------------------
Re: The fearless evangelist
By: patrick jane Date: October 13, 2021, 7:30 pm
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What Comes After the Ex-Gay Movement? The Same Thing That Came
Before.
Old-school evangelical leaders once knew the value of “care”
over “cure.”
“You know, Mike, I used to be gay,” I said.
Mike stopped moving his paintbrush as the words fell clumsily
from my mouth. He was painting the St. Louis apartment I called
home in the summer of 1997 as I began working toward my PhD in
historical theology.
He’d asked me about my schooling, and we got to talking about
faith. Mike had explained to me how he felt he could never go to
church because he was gay.
“I know they say that’s not supposed to happen,” I went on,
after dropping the bombshell. “But that’s my story.” Mike stared
at me with interest as he set the paint can down, gently
balancing his brush on its edge.
Looking back on this encounter, I can see that it had all the
trappings of what became known as the ex-gay movement, of which
I was once an eager proponent. Most notable is my use of the
ex-gay script: “I used to be gay.” The phrase implied that I
wasn’t gay anymore. I had a testimony, a story to tell about
leaving homosexuality behind.
To be clear, my sexual attractions at that moment were drawn as
exclusively to other men as ever. I was still at the top of the
Kinsey scale that researchers since the 1940s have used to
classify sexual orientation. What made me ex-gay was that I used
the ex-gay script. I was trying to convince myself that I was a
straight man with a disease—a curable one—called homosexuality.
A condition that was being healed.
My terminological maneuver was an integral component of
conversion therapy. Alan Medinger, the first executive director
of Exodus International, described it as “a change in
self-perception in which the individual no longer identifies
him- or herself as homosexual.” It was all about identity. The
testimony made the man. And, within my ex-gay framework, I
wasn’t lying; I was claiming my new reality.
I was an ex-gay.
The emergence of Exodus International in 1976 had set
evangelicals on a hopeful path toward curing homosexuality.
Founder Frank Worthen explained, “When we started Exodus, the
premise was that God could change you from gay to straight.”
What followed was a decades-long experiment on hundreds of
thousands of human test subjects. The movement collapsed after
Exodus president Alan Chambers’s 2012 statement that more than
99 percent of Exodus clients had not experienced a change in
their sexual orientation.
Although the paradigm of cure failed, it still walks undead
among us, as some within major denominations try to
institutionalize its approach. Recent debates among conservative
Anglicans and Presbyterians over whether someone can claim a
“gay identity” are only the latest round of similar disputes
that have echoed in church corridors for years. After all,
renouncing a homosexual self-perception was an essential first
step in conversion therapy.
One effect of this approach was that it mandated that
non-straight believers hide behind a mask, pretending to be
anything but gay. It was part of the reparative process.
But this theological innovation was a relatively recent
development. Before there was an ex-gay paradigm of cure, there
was an older orthodoxy that included a Christian paradigm of
caring for believers who aren’t straight.
I’ve wondered whether Henri Nouwen had his own homosexuality in
mind when he wrote of the difference between care and cure. In
the biography Wounded Prophet, Michael Ford documents how Nouwen
discussed his experience as a celibate gay man with his close
circle of friends. Nouwen had tried psychological and religious
methods of orientation change, but to no avail. He knew that out
of obedience to God, he couldn’t let himself engage in sexual
relationships. But his path was filled with loneliness and
unfulfilled longings and many tears.
In Bread for the Journey, he wrote, “Care is being with, crying
out with, suffering with, feeling with. Care is compassion. It
is claiming the truth that the other person is my brother or
sister, human, mortal, vulnerable, like I am.”
“Often we are not able to cure,” he insisted, “but we are always
able to care.”
Evangelical leaders, including John Stott, helped lay a
foundation for a pastoral paradigm of care. Stott—the theologian
and writer labeled the “Protestant Pope” by the BBC—argued that
sexual orientation remains a part of one’s constitution. As
Stott wrote in Issues Facing Christians Today back in 1982, “In
every discussion about homosexuality we must be rigorous in
differentiating between this ‘being’ and ‘doing,’ that is,
between a person’s identity and activity, sexual preference and
sexual practice, constitution and conduct.”
For Stott, a homosexual orientation was part of the believer’s
identity—a fallen part, but one that the gospel doesn’t erase so
much as it humbles.
This posture runs even further back than Stott. C. S.
Lewis spoke in a 1954 letter to Sheldon Vanauken of a “pious
male homosexual” with no apparent contradiction. Lewis’s
lifelong best friend Arthur Greeves was gay. Lewis called him
his “first friend” and made it clear to him that his sexual
orientation never would be an issue in their friendship. They
vacationed together. The compilation of letters Lewis sent to
Greeves, collected under the title They Stand Together, reaches
592 pages.
In the United States, as the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York
announced the birth of the gay rights movement, orthodox
Protestants were already asking what positive vision Scripture
gives for people who are gay. The 1970 pseudonymous InterVarsity
Press book The Returns of Love: Letters of a Christian
Homosexual mapped out a path of care and was promoted by Stott.
The book’s celibate gay Anglican author explained that he was
still a virgin at the time he wrote it.
Evangelicalism’s leaders knew there was a history of abuse with
which to reckon. In a 1968 letter to a European pastor, Francis
Schaeffer lamented the church’s complicity in marginalizing gay
people. The pastor had seen no fewer than six gay people commit
suicide, and he sought Schaeffer’s counsel. “The homophile tends
to be pushed out of human life (and especially orthodox church
life) even if he does not practice homosexuality,” lamented
Schaeffer. “This, I believe, is both cruel and wrong.” Indeed,
Schaeffer’s ministry became a magnet for gay people wrestling
with Christianity.
Such leaders saved their disgust for abusive religious leaders.
When Jerry Falwell Sr. brought up the challenge of gay people
with Schaeffer in private, Schaeffer commented that the issue
was complicated. As Schaeffer’s son, Frank, recounted in an
interview with NPR and also in his book Crazy for God, Falwell
then shot back a rejoinder: “If I had a dog that did what they
do, I’d shoot it.” There was no humor in Falwell’s voice.
Afterward, Francis Schaeffer said to his son, “That man is
really disgusting.”
“Sexual sins are not the only sins,” Stott wrote in Issues, “nor
even necessarily the most sinful; pride and hypocrisy are surely
worse.”
In 1980, Stott convened a gathering of Anglican evangelicals to
map out a pastoral approach to homosexuality. They led with
public repentance for their own sins against gay people. In a
statement, these leaders declared, “We repent of the crippling
‘homophobia’ … which has coloured the attitudes toward
homosexual people of all too many of us, and call our fellow
Christians to similar repentance.”
It was a staggering confession at a time when popular opinion
was still biased strongly against gay people. This was not the
21st century, when many Christian leaders repent in order to
look relevant and inclusive in a culture that celebrates all
things fabulous. Stott and these evangelical leaders must have
been truly grieved for the ways they had injured their neighbors
and siblings in Christ. The statement called specifically for
qualified nonpracticing gay people to be received as candidates
for ordination to ministry.
Five years earlier, many were shocked by Billy Graham’s similar
comments in a news conference, some of which were reported in
1975 in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Graham had been asked
whether he would support the ordination of gay men to the
Christian ministry. Graham had replied that they “should be
considered on individual merit” based on certain qualifications.
Specifically, the article mentioned “turning away from their
sins, receiving Christ, offering themselves to Christ and the
ministry after repentance, and obtaining the proper training for
the job.”
The gospel of Jesus Christ offers a positive vision for gay
people. “In homosexuality,” Lewis explained to Vanauken, “as in
every other tribulation, [the works of God] can be made
manifest.” He continued: “Every disability conceals a vocation,
if only we can find it, which will ‘turn the necessity to
glorious gain.’ ”
Lewis asked, “What should the positive life of the homosexual
be?” That’s the question any gay person who comes to faith in
Jesus will ask.
Too often the answer we hear is simply “No.”
No sex. No dating. No relationships. Often, no leadership roles.
That leaves people like me hearing that we have, as Eve Tushnet
explained in a 2012 piece in The American Conservative, a
“vocation of No.”
What is a calling of “Yes”? What is the positive Christian
vision the gospel gives for gay people?
When I look at the lives and ministries of Lewis, Schaeffer,
Graham, and Stott, what stands out most clearly is that they
bring a vision of Jesus: Jesus, in his saving power. Jesus, who
washes us and makes us clean. Jesus, who brings us into God’s
family. Jesus, who covers shame and forgives sin. Jesus, who
calls us by name. Jesus, who sees us all the way down and still
wants to be in relationship with us. Jesus, who suffers with and
for us. Jesus, who challenges us to live for his kingdom. Jesus,
who gives new life with all its joy. Jesus, who is that treasure
in a field for which we sold everything. Jesus, who is that
treasure that can never be taken from us.
This is Jesus, whose inbreaking kingdom sweeps us up into
something he is doing in the cosmos, something larger than
ourselves. In Christ, we find ourselves in a larger narrative.
This is not Jesus as a means to an end of heterosexual
functioning and comfortable family life. This is God himself as
the end for which we were made. With this real God, the locus of
hope is found not in this life with heterosexuality, but in the
coming age, when we shall stand before our Savior.
Without that relationship with a Savior, there is no point in
speaking of a biblical sexual ethic, either to straight or gay
people. No gay people are going to embrace such an ethic unless
they fall in love with Jesus. A heart smitten by grace is not
only willing but also eager to follow the one who died for us.
Schaeffer, Stott, and Graham all stated on occasion their shared
belief that some people are born gay. All of these Christian
leaders also held to the historical understanding of the
biblical sexual ethic. This certainly meant committing to a life
in line with God’s creational pattern—his design. Not one of
them supported sexual unions for believers outside of a
monogamous marriage between two people of different sexes. But
they approached gay people from a posture of humility.
Their vision did not flatten people into our unwanted sexual
urges. Instead, they recognized that a same-sex-oriented
believer’s biggest struggle may be not with sexual sin but with
the ability to give and receive love. So they emphasized the
need for the community of the church; for deep, long-term
friendships; for brotherhood, to be known even in celibacy.
Stott, himself celibate, explained: “At the heart of the
homosexual condition is a deep and natural hunger for mutual
love, a search for identity and a longing for completeness. If
gay people cannot find these things in the local ‘church
family,’ we have no business to go on using that expression.”
Lewis, Schaeffer, Graham, and Stott also viewed the homosexual
condition as an unchosen orientation with no reliable
expectation of a change in this life. They showed great concern
for the emotional and relational needs of gay people. Schaeffer
insisted in his 1968 letter that the church needed to be the
church and help “the individual in every way possible.”
In his NPR interview, Frank Schaeffer described his father’s
Swiss ministry, L’Abri, as a place “where homosexuals—both
lesbians and gay men—are welcomed.” He added: “No one’s telling
them they’ve got to change or that they’re horrible people. And
they go away, you know, having found my father wonderfully
compassionate and Christlike to them.”
Schaeffer foresaw significant cultural changes when, in 1978, an
Orthodox Presbyterian Church congregation in San Francisco found
itself sued for releasing a gay employee who had violated the
church’s code of conduct. In The Great Evangelical Disaster,
Schaeffer said it would be silly for other churches to think
they might not face the same challenge.
Still, Schaeffer and Graham didn’t recommend us-verses-them
approaches. Just weeks before the 1964 presidential election, a
gay sex scandal rocked the nation. President Lyndon Johnson’s
top adviser, Walter Jenkins, was arrested a second time for
having gay sex in a YMCA restroom. Graham called the White House
to intercede for Jenkins.
In the recorded phone call, Graham charged Johnson to show
compassion to Jenkins.
Asked about homosexuality at a 1997 San Francisco crusade,
Graham remarked to reporters, “There are other sins. Why do we
jump on that sin as though it’s the greatest sin?” He added, “I
have so many gay friends, and we remain friends.” Speaking to a
crowd of 10,000 that night in the Cow Palace, Graham declared,
“Whatever your background, whatever your sexual orientation, we
welcome you tonight.”
As Stott emphasized so passionately in Issues, the gay person
who follows Jesus must live by faith, hope, and love: Faith in
both God’s grace and in his standards. Hope to look beyond this
present life of struggle to our future glory. But the love by
which we must live, he explained, is the love we must receive
from Christ’s spiritual family, the church. We must depend upon
love from the very churches that have historically failed to
give it to people like us.
Church historian Richard Lovelace’s 1978 book Homosexuality and
the Church garnered hearty endorsements from evangelical
luminaries Ken Kantzer (a former CT editor), Elisabeth Elliot,
Chuck Colson, Harold Ockenga, and Carl F. H. Henry. The
book might seem radical in today’s climate, but in the 1970s it
represented a transatlantic neoevangelical vision. In contrast
to homophobia on the right and sexual compromise on the left,
Lovelace laid out the gospel challenge:
There is another approach to homosexuality which would be
healthier both for the church and for gay believers, and which
could be a very significant witness to the world. This approach
requires a double repentance, a repentance both for the church
and for its gay membership. First, it would require professing
Christians who are gay to have the courage both to avow
[acknowledge] their orientation openly and to obey the Bible’s
clear injunction to turn away from the active homosexual
life-style. … Second, it would require the church to accept,
honor, and nurture nonpracticing gay believers in its
membership, and ordain these to positions of leadership for
ministry.
The church’s sponsorship of openly avowed but repentant
homosexuals in leadership positions would be a profound witness
to the world concerning the power of the Gospel to free the
church from homophobia and the homosexual from guilt and
bondage.
Only the gospel can open up the humility for such a dual
repentance. Yet this was the Christian vision of Lovelace and
Henry, Ockenga and Elliot, Kantzer and Colson, Lewis and Graham,
Schaeffer and Stott, and a young gay evangelical Anglican who
felt too afraid to use his own name, even though he was still a
virgin.
Christian fathers and mothers like these had it right.
Tragically, I write this as a lament for a road not traveled on
this side of the Atlantic.
Already by the late 1970s, a hard shift had begun. As ex-gay
ministries in North America multiplied with their expectation of
orientation change, they shifted the locus of hope to this life.
As the AIDS crisis devastated gay communities in the 1980s,
evangelicals embraced the promise of heterosexuality. The
secular reparative therapists added a semblance of clinical
respectability. The new path to cure pushed out the older path
to care.
And then the conservative side in a culture war discovered that
we ex-gays were useful. We were proof that gay people could
choose to become straight if they really wanted to. And if we
could become straight, then there really wasn’t so much need for
the church to repent of its homophobia. It just required people
like me to maintain the illusion that we had changed.
In the aftermath of that lost culture war that radically
transformed the sexual mores of the West, there is much for
Christians to grieve. Transactional relationships. Disposable
marriages. Vastly changed assumptions about sexuality and
gender.
But the conservative church’s hesitancy to repent has not
dissipated. As I watch evangelical churches and denominations
fumble their way through discussions of sexual orientation and
identity, often enforcing the language and categories of a
failed ex-gay movement, we’re missing the real battle: The
surrounding culture has convinced the world that Christians hate
gay people.
Our calling is to prove them wrong.
The world is watching. Our children and grandchildren are
watching. They are already second-guessing their faith because
they hear all around them that Christians hate gay people, and
they can’t point to anyone in their congregation who is gay, is
faithful, and is loved and accepted as such. Maybe they can
point to someone who uses the language of same-sex attraction.
But even that is rare. It’s still not safe to do so.
I am not saying we are at risk of losing Christians who are
attracted to members of the same sex; that’s a given.
I am saying we are at risk of losing the next generation.
For those who are listening, an older generation of Christians
is still willing and able to help us understand.
Greg Johnson is lead pastor of Memorial Presbyterian Church in
St. Louis and author of Still Time to Care: What We Can Learn
from the Church’s Failed Attempt to Cure Homosexuality.
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Re: The fearless evangelist
By: patrick jane Date: January 14, 2022, 6:24 pm
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9 in 10 Evangelicals Don’t Think Sermons Are Too Long
Even with recent divides in congregations, survey finds high
levels of satisfaction among churchgoers.
At a time when pastors feel particularly under pressure, here’s
some good news from the pews: Evangelical churchgoers are pretty
happy with how things are going at their churches.
Most don’t think the sermons are too long; if anything, they’d
like to see more in-depth teaching from leaders. They aren’t
bothered by too many messages about giving. They don’t think
social issues and politics play an outsized role in the
teaching.
That’s according to a new survey of evangelical churchgoers in
the US, the Congregational Scorecard conducted by Grey Matter
Research and Consulting and Infinity Concepts.
Around three-quarters are satisfied with their congregation
approach to various areas of church life and wouldn’t want it to
change, the survey found.
Among the findings:
85 percent are satisfied with the length of their sermons and
how long the service runs.
88 percent are happy with how often the church asks for tithes
and donations.
74 percent like the style of the service, while the remainder
are split between some preferring more traditional and some
preferring more contemporary.
“By and large, churches are doing a pretty good job of giving
evangelicals what they want to experience,” the researchers
concluded. The survey focused on evangelicals by belief who
attend worship services at least occasionally.
Those who don’t think sermons are the right length are just as
likely to say they want them longer as they are to want them
shorter.
A 2019 Pew Research Center analysis found that average
evangelical sermon is 39 minutes long, while sermons in
historically Black churches tend to be longer, around 54
minutes. There’s no single answer for the ideal sermon length,
but Mark Dever told 9Marks last year, “A sermon should be as
long as a preacher can well preach and a congregation can well
listen.”
Grey Matter reported that few young churchgoers are bored with
preaching; just 10 percent of those under 40 want shorter
sermons. Of those 70 and older, 11 percent would like the pastor
to preach shorter.
And younger evangelicals are the ones most likely to want more
in-depth teaching from their churches. Evangelicals under 40 are
twice as likely as their seniors (39% to 20%) to want more
substance from the pulpit.
“Virtually no evangelical churchgoers wish their church would
lighten up a little on [in-depth teaching], but three out of ten
would like more of it,” according to the Grey Matter report. “So
maybe it is time some church leaders push just a little bit more
in terms of the depth of teaching they are providing.”
Even after a year when some congregants criticized COVID-19
responses and churches saw deepening fissures over how leaders
engaged political and social issues, most churchgoers still gave
their churches high marks in these areas.
Two-thirds said their church had the right amount of political
engagement. Those who weren’t satisfied were twice as likely to
say they wanted less politics in church (22%) than to wish for
more (11%).
For people who don’t attend as regularly (once a month or less),
political messaging was the top thing they’d want to change
about church; 35 percent said they wanted less politics.
Evangelicals were twice as likely to say they want more
engagement with social issues from their church than less (19%
versus 9%); 72 percent were happy with how their church
addressed such issues. Younger evangelicals (25%) and African
American evangelicals (34%) were particularly likely to want
social issues to come up more.
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Re: The fearless evangelist
By: patrick jane Date: February 6, 2022, 10:49 pm
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When We Were Your Age, We Needed Jesus Too
Thirty Christian authors remember the struggles of their teenage
years while sharing hard-won gospel wisdom with teens today.
Youth ministry is real pastoral ministry. That ministry involves
a hefty dose of pastoral care for students and their parents as
they navigate a host of challenges: doubt, perfectionism, mental
health struggles, eating disorders, questions about their sexual
orientation or gender identity, suicidal ideation, and grief—to
name just a few. It can be overwhelming to know how to offer
pastoral support while applying the gospel without minimizing
their crisis.
For this reason, The Jesus I Wish I Knew in High School has
quickly become one of my go-to books to give away. It offers a
unique perspective that easily resonates with students, helps
them realize they aren’t alone, and invites them to consider
what difference the gospel makes in real life.
The Jesus I Wish I Knew in High School is edited by the leaders
of the Rooted Ministry and features 30 chapters, each with a
different author reflecting on their teen years and what they
wish they understood about the gospel when they were younger.
The editors describe the intention of the book this way: “We
want you to be filled with hope, peace, joy, and freedom. We
want you to have Christ at the very center of your life, because
he is the only place where we find true, abundant life.”
Multifaceted message of grace
Each chapter follows the same general pattern: The author
recounts a pivotal moment in their teen years that highlights
their own need for Christ, and then they apply the gospel to
their teenage self before closing with a final word to their
teenage readers today. Each chapter also contains a keyword
(gospel, justification, shame, grace, and so on) that is defined
and then applied with a two- or three-sentence statement about
“What this means for you.” Although there are 30 different
authors, the book pulls the diversity of voices and stories
together into one multifaceted message of grace.
It’s important to highlight the name of the book is The Jesus I
Wish I Knew in High School—not The Jesus I Wish I Knew About in
High School. Many of these authors grew up in church and knew
the gospel. They had orthodox theology. But they didn’t yet know
Jesus. This is a stark reminder to parents and youth workers
that conversion is the work of the Holy Spirit. Apart from the
work of the Spirit, students’ knowledge is only knowledge about
God, not saving faith. Emily Heide captures this well by
writing, “Whether your conversion looks like Paul’s (dramatic
and sudden), or Thomas’s (slow to develop and full of
questions), or maybe somewhere in between—rest assured that the
Lord has the same merciful love for you and will use your story
for his glory.”
This serves as a reminder about the role of struggle and crises
in teenagers’ faith formation. It’s a natural impulse to protect
our kids at all costs and to shelter them from suffering. But
when parents and youth workers do that, they’re undermining a
biblical view of suffering as something that produces
perseverance, character, and hope (Rom. 5:3–5). This book is an
implicit warning against becoming a helicopter parent (or
pastor), as well as a wise guide for students learning to
navigate crises in light of the gospel.
Sometimes that moment of crisis comes when the pressure to be
perfect overwhelms you, or when you don’t get named captain or
homecoming queen, or with the slow burn of feeling unsure about
your salvation. For others, the wake-up call comes through God’s
megaphone of suffering. Books written for teenagers can tend to
highlight dramatic stories so much that students with “boring
testimonies” feel even more boring than they felt before
reading. But this is not the case here. Students will find their
story—whether it reflects normal teenage life or something more
dramatic—mirrored in these pages.
Scott Sauls confesses the insecurities that drove him to
mistreat others: “I had been so desperate for attention, so
desperate for approval, and so desperate not to be made fun of
or bullied myself, that I had become the bully.” Rachel Kang
reflects on her experience grappling with physical disability:
“I should have been dreaming about possibilities of my future,
not dreading the reality that my body was broken and in need of
healing.” Michelle Ami Reyes describes being “the lone
brown-skinned Indian girl in an all-white town. No one in my
school, my church, or my neighborhood looked like me or lived
life like me.” Scotty Smith opens his heart by writing, “The
tragedy of my mom’s death exposed several things in my life: the
absence of my relationship with Jesus, the absence of a
relationship with my dad, and how much I relied on my mom. She
was my world—my oxygen, light, and feast. My dad was essentially
a stranger.” And Catherine Allen addresses body-image issues:
“Sadly, deep down, I believed I wasn’t good enough. … As a
chubby, outgoing, unathletic, mediocre student, I believed that
if I was smarter, more attractive, and more soft-spoken, I would
be desirable.”
These are the types of stories gracing the pages of The Jesus I
Wish I Knew in High School, and they are told with a surprising
degree of vulnerability but without ever glorifying sin or
oversharing details. Teenagers will see themselves (and their
friends) in these accounts of struggle, and they’ll see Jesus
redeeming them with grace. Whether students read the entire book
or only the chapters that seem to resonate with their felt
needs, they will encounter familiar struggles, all while
witnessing the life-giving and healing power of the gospel.
Healing generational divides
One of the strengths of the book is the genuine diversity among
the authors. Whatever the makeup of your students, they will
find themselves represented here. Even more surprising are the
ways they will find themselves identifying with stories by those
who are different. In this way, the book presents more than
tokenism. By keeping the gospel front and center, it highlights
what we have in common through Christian unity and fellowship,
even while acknowledging the particularities of our different
backgrounds and experiences. This book will resonate with Gen Z,
a true melting-pot generation.
Speaking of generations, the honesty and vulnerability of these
chapters make The Jesus I Wish I Knew in High School something
more than a gospel-saturated resource for teenagers. In
addition, the book offers a surprisingly insightful window into
the authors’ own generation (most are in their thirties or
forties). Amid our current generational divides between boomers,
Gen X, and millennials, I’m convinced that non-youth leaders
would benefit from reading about the teenage experiences of
these godly men and women. Reading their honest accounts of
racism, abuse, insecurity, fear, and anxiety carries significant
potential to foster meaningful conversations with more than just
the generation to whom this book is written.
If you want a book for teenagers that they’ll actually read, buy
this one. It’s story-driven and gospel-saturated. And buy a copy
for yourself to help you better understand those who are
ministering to teenagers, too.
Mike McGarry is the youth pastor at South Shore Baptist Church
in Hingham, Massachusetts. He is the author of A Biblical
Theology of Youth Ministry and Lead Them to Jesus.
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Re: The fearless evangelist
By: patrick jane Date: February 23, 2022, 12:13 pm
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Studying Great Evangelicals’ Lives Made Me Less Ambitious
To avoid hurting our marriages and families, we can learn from
our forerunners in the faith.
Back in 2015, while my wife played with our three children on
our neighborhood playground, I stared in dumbfounded disbelief
after reading a puzzling tweet by former pastor Tullian
Tchividjian: “Welcome to the valley of the shadow of death…
thank God grace reigns there.”
I quickly learned that this quote referred to the recently
revealed marital indiscretions of both Tchividjian and his wife.
This popular icon in the Reformed resurgence movement had, like
so many, been found out for disastrous misdeeds that led to the
dissolution of their marriage.
When the news broke, I had just accepted an associate pastorate
at Calvary Memorial Church in Oak Park and was a couple months
shy of beginning doctoral studies in Christian history at
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
For the next seven years, I went on to study the history of
evangelicals. All the while, I kept on the lookout for the same
historical pattern, one I didn’t want to ignore in the
literature—especially since its repetition and consequences
continued to play out in the 21st-century evangelical world I
inhabited.
The all-too-common pattern I discovered is this: Great
evangelical figures throughout history often had tragic personal
and family lives. This trope winked at me repeatedly as I came
across it in biographies and historical accounts of evangelical
pastors, revivalists, and activists.
Evangelical history happens to provide numerous cautionary tales
for what happens when ambition goes unbridled. And while some
evangelicals would rather gloss over these tales or conceal
them, that would be to our detriment. These warnings can be a
service to the future of the evangelical story—and heeding them
may prompt us to curb our ambition, set healthy limits and
expectations, and attend to the little church in our homes.
Personally, I want to learn from their mistakes by protecting my
family and guarding myself against tragedies of my own making.
Recently, while reading W. R. Ward’s Early Evangelicalism, I
came across a segment on the life of August Hermann Francke
(1663–1727), a figure who stood at the headwaters of evangelical
history. Francke was mentored by famous theologian Philipp Jakob
Spener and led the way for the second generation of German
pietism in the later 17th and early 18th centuries.
His public activism and institutional work circulated through
the evangelical press and social network of correspondence,
which gained him widespread credibility and regard among early
evangelicals. Later evangelicals, like John Wesley, repeated the
pattern of Francke’s work ethic and strategy in their own
ministries, sadly to the detriment of their personal lives as
well.
You see, while Francke engaged himself in marvelous kingdom
work, his marriage to Anna Magdalena Francke suffered from the
disappointment of unmet needs. By midlife, Anna and August
became estranged, and in 1715, their separation became public.
Ward also hints that August paid scant attention to their
daughter, Sophia, while he fulfilled his theological ambitions.
So while Francke’s public evangelical ministry and activism
flourished, the health of his household languished. Surely,
something was amiss here, I thought—there must have been a
disconnect between Francke’s public ministry and his private
interior religion.
Upon reading this historical recountal of Francke from Ward, I
tweeted, “As a historian who has read much about the tragic
private lives of great evangelical figures in history, I have,
as a result, become much less ambitious. No achievement is worth
the cost of a healthy family.”
But the Francke story that prompted my tweet was merely the most
recent tragedy among a litany of others I had come across in my
research.
One figure of this historical movement that has drawn my
curiosity is Abraham Kuyper. Much like the Anglican C. S. Lewis,
some historians would be reticent to portray Kuyper as a
self-conscious early evangelical forerunner. Nonetheless, both
figures have heavily influenced the development of the modern
evangelical mind, including my own.
Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) was both precocious and ambitious. He
became known for his Protestant work ethic and commitment to a
Christian mission to transform all of society. Many evangelical
thinkers and their written works have lauded this pivotal figure
in ecclesial history—but the majority of them do not tell the
full story.
Kuyper is oft remembered by evangelicals for the following
quote: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our
human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all,
does not cry, ‘Mine!’” And yet the truth is, he struggled in the
domain of his personal and family life.
Kuyper suffered from debilitating anxiety and depression, which
at times left him bedridden. He learned to cope with the
symptoms of being overworked by frequently withdrawing for long
periods of solitude in holidays and hikes. As a result, his wife
and children hungered for his presence during these long
absences while he recovered from the rigors of his missional
work.
Unfortunately, Francke and Kuyper are just the tip of the
iceberg when it comes to the costs evangelical families have
paid for their loved ones’ Reformed Protestant work ethic.
Recently, someone asked me to offer some examples, and I
reluctantly gave a few names—some of which I know from my own
archival research and others I learned from other historians’
work. The problem with naming names and being fascinated by
“who’s done it” is that it can lead to a voyeuristic or
unproductive historical fascination rather than to a healthy
discussion.
I think what evangelicals actually need is less fascination with
the dark sides of our fallen heroes and more appreciation for
the quiet, daily faithfulness of pastors, professors,
revivalists, and activists who managed to swim against the
powerful social and cultural currents of their times that often
placed an unrealistic demand on their output and performance.
Evangelical leaders throughout history have carried a heavy
weight, and they continue to bear the unrealistic expectations
of many institutions, publishing houses, and ministries that
dominate the evangelical marketplace. Over time, some of these
leaders give in to the temptations that come with notoriety and
ultimately forsake their better judgment. And sadly, evangelical
organizations also have a history of giving into avarice for the
sake of success—and they too willingly eat the expense of their
leaders’ private failures and choose to keep them concealed.
When I observe the professional output of some evangelical
peers, I pray earnestly for God to protect them and their
families. While I’m thrilled for their successes, I recognize
and fear the cost that comes with always saying “Yes!” to every
opportunity. Far too often, it sets people up for failure,
especially if they do not remain accountable to their individual
or familial bodies.
For my part, I have become altogether less ambitious as a result
of studying evangelical history. As I’ve said, no achievement is
worth sacrificing a healthy family life. But this conviction is
not only built on my knowledge of the past and present downfalls
of evangelical leaders.
My caution toward ambition is also derived from my own lived
history. Just as evangelical ambition has slayed the credibility
of so many forerunners in the faith, I recall a time not too
long ago when it crouched at my own door.
I have been a burned-out pastor who stood at the crossroads,
looking down the potential path toward private tragedy. I have
experienced the grinding expectation to blog a certain amount,
gain a certain number of followers on social media, publish more
journal articles, curate the perfect CV, and make myself known
to the “right” people. I feel fatigued when I think back to the
many temptations I experienced and the various tactics I
employed to achieve my ambitions.
Some years ago, I had a personal crisis while attempting to be a
full-time pastor and full-time doctoral student. This crisis
caused me to reset myself and reorient my ambitions. My wife and
I went to couples therapy and to individual therapy for a year.
I reprioritized my schedule and set some professional limits on
my life. I started looking for ways to reinvest in time with my
children, and eventually we relearned how to value sabbath rest
together as a family.
I know that people are called to make sacrifices for the cause
of Christ. But even the apostle Paul argued that married people,
especially those with children, carry a certain worldly weight.
This requires them to have a balance—between how much of their
lives they lay down for the cause of Christ and how much time
and energy they reserve for their families.
That is, we should all seek to weigh our commitment to the
Protestant work ethic and the mission of God along with our
dedication to building little churches in our homes. And in this
area, evangelicals can learn from our forerunners’ failures—by
keeping our missional ambitions in their proper place and
spurring on our family’s devotion to God through selfless
service.
Joey Cochran is the husband of Kendall and the father of Chloe,
Asher, Adalie, and Clara. Presently he is guest faculty at
Wheaton College and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and
coordinates social media for the Conference on Faith and
History.
#Post#: 37882--------------------------------------------------
Re: The fearless evangelist
By: patrick jane Date: March 10, 2022, 11:21 pm
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$100M Ad Campaign Aims to Make Jesus the ‘Biggest Brand in Your
City’
“He Gets Us,” an effort to attract skeptics to Christianity,
launches nationally this month. But Christians still have
questions about how the church markets faith.
If you haven’t seen the commercials yet, you will.
This month, what is thought to be the biggest-ever Christian
advertising campaign will go national. Television commercials,
along with online ads and billboards, will target millennials
and Gen Z with a carefully crafted, exhaustively researched, and
market-tested message about Jesus Christ: He gets us.
Those behind the “He Gets Us” campaign say they’ll spend $100
million—donated by a small group of wealthy anonymous
families—on the national launch, putting the campaign in the
same financial arena as big-name brands like Old Navy, TD
Ameritrade, and Mercedes-Benz.
The video ads, some of which are already garnering millions of
views on YouTube, feature striking black-and-white photos and a
stirring piano track. Made under the direction of Michigan-based
marketing agency Haven, each ad focuses on an aspect of Jesus’
earthly experience with which today’s “the struggle is real”
crowd might resonate: Jesus was judged too. Jesus had fun with
his friends too.
The ads direct viewers to HeGetsUs.com, where they can choose
four ways to engage: chat live, text for “prayer and positive
vibes,” sign up to join a small group with Alpha, or click
through to a Bible reading plan on the YouVersion app.
It might be the largest campaign of its kind, but “He Gets Us”
is hardly the first time Christians have adopted secular media
strategies for spiritual ends. From televangelism to God
billboards to viral videos, every time technology advances, many
Christians see new opportunities to share the gospel of Jesus.
This time, though, it’s being branded by professionals and
boosted with a big-bucks budget.
There’s a marketing term for when someone who views an ad
ultimately buys the product: conversion. Christians have another
definition for that word: turning a life over to Jesus. It’s
this tension between “selling” and “converting” that prompts
some Christians to object to deploying business strategies in
church or using the secular marketing playbook to promote
Christianity.
“A lot of churches don’t use the ‘M-word’ when referring to
marketing,” said Haley Veturis, a digital communications expert
who’s worked with some of the biggest ministries in the US. But
marketing “is exactly what they’re doing,” she said, whenever
they serve their communities or invite people to a worship
service.
Veturis, former social media manager for Saddleback Church, now
runs the firm digifora with partner Justin Brackett, former
marketing consultant for Lakewood Church. The two agreed that if
evangelism is just marketing by another name, then whether
churches have megachurch-size budgets or not, they’re always
focusing some energy on marketing. It’s how they do it that
often creates tension.
When firms like theirs encourage clients to “distinguish” their
church from others or when they begin to advertise through
billboards and online banners, it can weary some Christians.
Marketing skeptics view such strategies as blurring the lines
between sharing the gospel and “productizing” the church, as
Brackett put it. They worry such ads could be seen as nothing
more than luring future tithers into local pews.
The creators of He Gets Us say this is a strength of their
particular campaign: It can’t be misunderstood as promoting a
single congregation, because churches all over the country and
across denominations are involved. The campaign hired Gloo, a
company that specializes in using data to help churches, to
recruit congregations to answer the calls and texts for prayer
or to receive visitors who click for more information on
HeGetsUs.com.
In an ad created by Gloo to recruit churches for that effort
just before Christmas last year, a narrator asks, “What if,
instead of all these consumer ads, Jesus was the biggest brand
in your city this holiday?”
Decades after Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan introduced
the idea that “the medium is the message,” some Christians
object that treating Jesus like a consumer product could
encourage non-Christians to treat him the same way once they get
to church.
“The story of Jesus … doesn’t need to be sold, but it is worth
sharing,” said Brad Abare, who used to run Church Marketing
Sucks, an online resource that explored the tension Christians
faced in differentiating evangelism from sales.
Since the “product” of the gospel message is transformation,
people’s testimonies—their actual changed lives—advertise for
themselves.
“Jesus knew the best way to spread the word was to live a life
worth following,” Abare said. “So while the He Gets Us campaign
is admirable for its intent, it does make me wonder that if we
had more followers of Jesus worth following, what else we could
put $100 million to work doing?”
The $100 million for He Gets Us comes from The Servant Christian
Foundation, a nonprofit backed by a Christian donor-advised fund
called The Signatry. (Both declined to name the donors who
helped envision and pay for He Gets Us, who want to remain
anonymous.)
Donor-advised funds are popular with evangelical investors who
want to make large gifts without setting up their own private
foundations. Wealthy clients invest with The Signatry, which
will then either manage the money in an investment fund or help
them find nonprofits to support. So far, The Signatry has given
away over $3 billion from Christian philanthropists.
Last year, The Servant Christian Foundation approached Bill
McKendry, founder and chief creative officer at Haven, concerned
that too many young Americans are leaving Christianity and that
more people were growing hostile toward faith. Their idea: a
national media blitz for Jesus at a scale that no single church
could afford.
McKendry said approaching American Christianity’s image problem
with business savvy is what Jesus would have done. “[Jesus]
crafted his language and his storytelling to resonate with
people,” he said. “He told agricultural stories to farmers. He
told fish stories to fishermen. … This culture is immersed in
media, and we’re using media to reach them for Christ.”
Haven, which has run ad campaigns for Christian brands like
Focus on the Family, Alliance Defending Freedom, and American
Bible Society, came up with—to put it in marketing terms—a
“problem statement” that their campaign would answer: “How did
the world’s greatest love story in Jesus become known as a hate
group?”
The project began with six months of market research, including
online and telephone surveys, to try to learn more about what
McKendry calls the “movable middle.” Their research found that
over half of American adults are religious skeptics or cultural
Christians—people who believe in Jesus but don’t have an active
relationship with him.
Prior to the national campaign, which will run through the fall
of this year, He Gets Us had a two-month test launch in ten
cities in late 2021. During that time, it led 17,000 people to
engage with the site’s offers to chat, join an Alpha group, or
start YouVersion’s Bible reading plan. More than half of those
who clicked through to begin YouVersion’s seven-day reading plan
went on to complete the full week.
Steve French, president and CEO of The Signatry as well as The
Servant Christian Foundation, said he hopes the campaign has an
impact like the 1979 movie Jesus, which was created as an
evangelism tool by Campus Crusade for Christ (now known as Cru).
The film made a blip at the box office, but according to the
Jesus Film Project, it has since been seen by 5 billion people
and translated into over 1,000 languages. By 2004, The New York
Times suggested it might be the most-watched and most-translated
movie of all time.
So far, hundreds of churches have signed up to respond to people
who fill out connect forms on HeGetsUs.com. Scott Beck, CEO of
Gloo, which is running that digital infrastructure, said he
expects many more churches will join when the campaign launches
nationally. There is no theological criteria or statement of
faith that churches must adhere to in order to take part.
“We hope that all churches that are aligned with the He Gets Us
campaign will participate,” said Jason Vanderground, president
at Haven. “This includes multiple denominational and
nondenominational church affiliations, Catholic and Protestant,
churches of various sizes, ethnicities, languages, and geography
… ultimately, the goal is inspiration, not recruitment or
conversion.”
That goal has made the ads somewhat controversial even apart
from church marketing concerns. McKendry at Haven said some
Christians have criticized the ads, saying that by emphasizing a
God who “gets us,” they don’t give a full picture of Christ’s
deity. (Some YouTube commenters, for example, took issue with a
video released before Christmas about how “Jesus was born to a
teen mom.”)
The criticism carries echoes of a longstanding rift among
evangelicals: Does becoming “seeker sensitive” risk watering
down the gospel?
“The church needs to understand that this campaign isn’t for
them, it’s for Jesus,” McKendry said. “It’s to reach an audience
we’re not currently reaching.”
But even bringing someone into the doors of a church isn’t
necessarily “enough,” said Jason Daye, who formerly worked as a
vice president at Outreach, which creates marketing materials
for churches.
“The goal [of marketing] shouldn’t just be to get a bunch of
people to show up,” Daye said. “If that’s your goal … then
you’re missing out on the bigger piece of what we’re called to
do. And that is to build those relationships that lead people to
Jesus.”
McKendry said He Gets Us has the same goal; they’re just playing
the long game.
“Is the goal that people become Christians? Obviously,” he said.
“But more importantly for now … we need to raise their level of
respect for Jesus, and then they’ll move.”
Despite disagreements about tactics or even the content, the He
Gets Us team is confident that they’re starting where every
successful ad campaign starts: with a good product. Market
research, McKendry said, found skeptics were more likely to be
convinced their values lined up with Jesus’ than with other
religious figures like Mohammad or Buddha.
“Jesus,” said French, “is really the strong brand here.”
Meet the TikTok Generation of Televangelists
#Post#: 38316--------------------------------------------------
Re: The fearless evangelist
By: patrick jane Date: March 28, 2022, 11:57 am
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Evangelicals Have Four Proposals for Harmonizing Genesis and
Evolution
Loren Haarsma maps out the prevailing schools of thought on the
origins of humanity and sin.
The past few years haven’t been kind to evangelicalism. Every
other month a new scandal or controversy seems to appear. Sexual
and spiritual abuse. Patriarchy and toxic masculinity. Critical
race theory and racism. The list goes on. Following in the wake
of these self-inflicted wounds, deconstruction and exvangelical
have become buzzwords in Christian discourse. No one should be
surprised.
Given the circumstances, it seems almost quaint to revisit
questions of evolution, original sin, and the historical Adam
and Eve. How do these decades-old theological controversies bear
upon our present predicament? The answer is simple. Despite
appearances, the phenomenon of deconstruction isn’t new, and the
story researcher David Kinnaman told in his 2011 book, You Lost
Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church … and Rethinking
Faith, still rings true. Younger people have been leaving the
faith in increasing numbers for decades, and one of the main
reasons is the perceived anti-science mindset of the church.
The anti-mask, anti-vaccine stance of far too many conservative
pastors and pundits added fuel to the fire, but the evangelical
problem with science ultimately comes down to resistance to
“secular” evolutionary science, which is set in opposition to
the biblical narrative. Of course, all evangelical Christians
feel a duty to be faithful to Scripture, but is it possible
leave room for evolution and remain faithful to the inspiration,
authority, and inerrancy of God’s Word?
The issues in play
In his book When Did Sin Begin? Human Evolution and the Doctrine
of Original Sin, Calvin University physics professor Loren
Haarsma outlines various evangelical proposals for harmonizing
human evolution and original sin. Drawing from a dozen recent
books on the subject, Haarsma runs through the four main
options:
God selected Adam and Eve from an existing population to
represent all of humanity. Since they represented everyone, the
consequences of their failure immediately affected everyone.
God selected Adam and Eve from an existing population to
represent humanity, but after being expelled from the Garden,
their sinfulness was spread to others by culture or genealogy.
Adam and Eve aren’t literal individuals. Rather, Genesis 2–3 is
a stylized retelling of many human events compressed into a
single archetypal story. Although God occasionally revealed his
will to individuals or groups, people persisted in disobedience.
Adam and Eve are symbolic figures in an archetypal story. Over a
long period of time, humans became morally accountable through
general revelation (Rom. 1:18–20), yet they chose sin.
Haarsma, the husband of BioLogos president Deborah Haarsma, has
been involved in faith-and-science dialogues for decades, and
his expertise shows throughout. The sort of “harmony” Haarsma
seeks isn’t a one-to-one correspondence between the details of
Scripture and science. Instead, he advocates “a harmony
reminiscent of J. S. Bach’s counterpoint,” which employs two
melodies played simultaneously. Each can be enjoyed
independently, but “played together, they form a richer whole.”
Before discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each view,
Haarsma spends the first half of the book reviewing the
theological and scientific issues that come into play:
scriptural interpretation, divine action, natural evils, and
human evolution. The opening chapter covers principles of
biblical interpretation, invoking John Calvin’s well-known
principle of divine accommodation—how God, knowing our
limitations, speaks to us in something resembling “baby talk”—to
explain the “ancient science” in the Bible. Haarsma concludes
that science doesn’t dictate interpretation, but “scientific
discoveries are one of several ways that the Holy Spirit has
prompted the church to reinterpret specific passages.”
On divine action, Haarsma focuses on addressing the common
objection that many aspects of evolution rely on random
processes, which nonspecialists characterize as “without
purpose” or “meaningless.” When scientists use the term
“random,” however, they simply mean “unpredictable” from a human
standpoint, which doesn’t rule out God’s purposes or control of
the processes.
Similarly, his discussion of natural evil addresses the common
misconception that animal suffering and death are consequences
of human sin and the Fall. Although there is “abundant
scientific evidence,” he writes, that “death was a natural part
of both animal and plant existence from the beginning,” Haarsma
turns also to Genesis, Job, and Romans 8 to make his case,
helpfully ending with a word of pastoral advice that in Christ,
“God gave us the mandate to ease the suffering of others.”
The chapter on human evolution begins with a review of the
genetic and fossil evidence for common ancestry, particularly
the fact that species start from a population, not a single
pair. Haarsma points out that the early sapiens population was
geographically spread out and never very large, but he stumbles
a bit on a population bottleneck between 100,000–200,000 years
ago. Recent research has ruled that out, but it’s a minor flaw
in an otherwise good discussion.
From there, the chapter shines in its treatment of human
sociality and gene-culture coevolution. The terms may be
unfamiliar, but the concept isn’t hard to understand.
Coevolution simply involves a “feedback loop” between genetic
and cultural change. For example, the genetic changes that led
to larger brains also required more calories to feed and more
time to learn and mature. Human survival techniques and social
structures had to adapt as a result. As Haarsma explains, “Each
generation inherited both genes and cultural practices from
their ancestors, and both were important for survival and
reproduction.”
This chapter is practically required reading for those
unfamiliar with recent developments in evolutionary thought.
Briefly, animals exhibit behaviors that we would label “naughty”
or “nice,” writes Haarsma, but “humans do much more than this.
Humans develop moral codes to regulate and improve behavior and
transmit these codes through actions and words.” Animals have
learned “rules” of behavior, and they have methods of
communication, but they lack language, which is necessary for
truly human morality.
Appropriately, the chapter on human evolution marks a turning
point in the book. Going forward, Haarsma poses pointed
theological questions about the soul, the image of God, Adam and
Eve in Scripture, the historical doctrine of original sin, the
definition of sin, and so on. He considers the answers posited
by the four main evangelical schools of thought, and he weighs
the pros and cons of each in their attempts to reconcile
Scripture and scientific evidence.
This approach is both a strength and a weakness. I greatly
appreciate the fact that Haarsma asks the right questions
without coming down on one side or the other. Unlike most who
write about these subjects, including myself, he doesn’t express
a preference, instead challenging his readers to consider the
options and choose for themselves. The downside isn’t a weakness
in his evidence or reasoning; it’s purely stylistic. The format
lends itself to a certain repetitiveness, but perhaps that was
unavoidable. I found it an occasional distraction, but no more
than a fly bumping against a windowpane.
Keeping Jesus in view
I’ll forego a detailed critique of the rest of the book,
respecting Haarsma’s decision not to provide answers, but I do
have a few nits to pick and highlights to hit.
Early on, I was concerned by several references to sin as “a
violation of God’s revealed will.” This shorthand definition is
problematic. First, it requires special revelation from God,
which would mostly rule out the fourth scenario—that over a long
period of time humans became morally accountable and chose sin.
Second, it implies that people who are unaware of God’s will
(for instance, those who “never heard”) could not sin. That
said, Haarsma’s chapter on sin did more than allay my fears—it
was worth the price of admission on its own. In particular,
Haarsma’s treatment of Romans 2 and general revelation was
handled beautifully.
Although I understand it as a marriage of convenience, I also
didn’t care for genealogy and culture being lumped together as
possible mechanisms for the transmission of sin. No one has
offered a clear mechanism for the transfer of sinfulness along
genealogical lines. Simply asserting the possibility isn’t an
explanation. Lines on a family tree don’t make a person a
sinner. On the other hand, the method of cultural transfer is
obvious. The fruit eaten in the Garden was from the Tree of the
Knowledge of Good and Evil. Knowledge is learned, not inherited
in the genes or by genealogy. Passing down knowledge from one
generation to the next is virtually the definition of “culture.”
It’s hard to equate those two very different explanations.
Fittingly, the book ends on another high note: “God’s Answer Is
Still Christ.” A common complaint of those who build Noah’s Ark
theme parks is that an evolutionary view of creation removes the
need for Christ’s atonement. As Haarsma thoroughly demonstrates,
that charge is not true. Across the spectrum of evangelical
interpreters who accept the science of evolution, none denies
the need for Christ’s atonement. To his credit, Haarsma keeps
Jesus in view throughout the book. I appreciated that even more
than his even-handed treatment of the various options for
understanding Adam and Eve.
A 2017 Gallup poll showed that, for the first time, there were
as many people who believed in God-guided evolution as people
who believed that humanity began with two people named Adam and
Eve. Including the minority (19%) who deny God’s involvement in
human evolution, most Americans (57%) accept the scientific
evidence. If a concern for evangelism is still one of the
hallmarks of evangelicalism, pastors and lay leaders especially
need to stop drawing needless lines in the sand on evolution and
the interpretation of early Genesis. It only pushes people away
from Christ.
If anyone has serious questions whether a person can believe
both Jesus and evolution, I recommend Haarsma’s book. The
problem isn’t a lack of faithful options. If anything, there are
too many.
Jay Johnson has written about evolution, original sin, and Adam
and Eve for Canadian-American Theological Review, BioLogos, the
Lutheran Coalition for Faith, Science & Technology, and God and
Nature magazine. His website is becomingadam.com.
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